Clijsters Knocks Williams Out of the Open

Kim Clijsters bounced on her toes, almost like a boxer coming out for the next round, waiting for the crowd noise to quell before serving, trying to push the match into a third set.

The serve went to Venus Williams’ forehand, and her return smacked into the net.

Set point might as well have been match point in the second set. And it was exactly that at the U.S. Open on Tuesday night, with the third set almost a formality, as the fourth-seeded Clijsters defeated No. 10 Williams, 4-6, 7-5, 6-1, in the quarterfinals in 2 hours 5 minutes.

It was perhaps the finest comeback of Clijsters’ career. The 22-year-old Belgian was down a set and trailed, 2-4, in the second, with Williams serving to make it 5-2. But Williams, who beat her younger sister Serena in the previous round, was rapidly tiring and the edge came off her game, piece by piece.

“I wasn’t really thinking about the score, just tried to keep fighting,” said Clijsters, who in the semifinals will play top-seeded Maria Sharapova of Russia, who defeated countrywoman Nadia Petrova, 7-5, 4-6, 6-4.

From 2-4, Clijsters promptly won eight of the next 10 points to pull to 4-4, and broke Williams again to serve for it at 5-4. But the Wimbledon champion refused to fold and equalized, 5-5.

They were going toe to toe in a gripping display of shot-making worthy of a Grand Slam event final. The match became something special shortly after midnight. Clijsters broke Williams at 5-5 and they battled hard in the 12th game, fighting through four deuces. Williams had two break points and Clijsters saved one with a brave venture to the net, finishing it with a swing volley.

Williams fought off two set points but succumbed on the third, netting the forehand return.

And, that was it, more or less. The third set lasted only 27 minutes as Clijsters broke an exhausted Williams three times, including at love in the final game. In all, the players combined for 13 service breaks.

Williams, who double-faulted seven times and had 51 unforced errors, said her left hip started to bother her and commented on Clijsters’ erratic play.

“I was playing decent. And then she started playing really bad and it totally threw me off,” Williams said. “She started hitting these really weird shots and just weird stuff.... And the next thing, I was playing as bad as she was.

“She was able to recover. I just wasn’t. I guess maybe it was a good strategy.”

Clijsters said she turned it around gradually.

“I also started noticing that she wasn’t running as well as she used to and not moving as well,” Clijsters said. “I knew that if I would win that second set I was going to have a good chance to win because I felt fine.”

This might have been the career-making match Clijsters has been searching for. She has lost in four Grand Slam event finals and is widely considered the best player never to win a major. Her brilliant hard-court record -- only one loss this year on the surface -- would have been a footnote had she lost to Williams for the seventh time in 10 matches.

Incredibly, the Williams-Clijsters marathon wasn’t the only blockbuster of the evening. The warm-up act featured two Russian women battling for, oh, 2 1/2 hours.

There was emotion, seismic momentum shifts, nine breaks of serve, one father in full melt-down mode (Yuri Sharapov) in the stands and a weird incident in the second set.

First, the odd incident. The players were in the middle of a rally when a ball came out of the stands and bounced on the court to Sharapova’s right. She stopped playing but the chair umpire said she didn’t see the ball.

Sharapova complained, saying: “What am I supposed to do?”

Her plea was to no avail.

“I said that the ball bounced on the court in the middle of the point and she [the chair umpire] said she did not see the ball,” Sharapova said. “And I said, ‘Well, there’s 20,000 people in the stands that saw the ball except you and I think we need to replay the point.’ ”

On the court, Sharapova giggled about her vanishing act in the second set against the ninth-seeded Petrova and made a reference to the Andy Roddick TV advertisement, saying, “All of a sudden, I don’t know, I went out of the stadium and my mojo wasn’t there.”